


Marinette's Abs - Alya

by OldAnimeFan



Series: Marinette's Abs [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Gen, Marinette's abs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-10-28
Packaged: 2018-08-27 13:28:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8403451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldAnimeFan/pseuds/OldAnimeFan
Summary: Marinette and Alya are studying for the upcoming Midterm Exams, when Alya makes a discovery about Marinette.





	

**Author's Note:**

> 2016-11-14 - I edited this story a little, mainly for grammar and punctuation. If you've already read the story, you don't need to read it again as the changes were minor. In fact, you probably won't notice the changes I made.

It was a Sunday afternoon, our usual study time. Her parents had said that Alya was in her room and to go on in.

"Alya?" I called out as I opened the door and entered, so she would know there was someone else there. "Alya?" There was no answer. Maybe she was in her bedroom or hadn't heard me yet.

I set my book bag down next to the computer table in her study room and took off my blazer, draping it over one of the chairs. Alya's room was always too warm for me. And of course, her whole house was similarly warm, since her family came from Martinique in the Caribbean, and she was born and raised there, several thousand miles away from Paris, and very much closer to the equator.

Her bedroom was off the study, and the bedroom door was open. "Alya, are you there?"

Just as I entered, Alya jumped out from beside the doorway and punched me deep in my upper abs, deep in my solar plexus. I might have been able to take that punch if I had been expecting it and had been prepared, but surprised as I was, Alya's fist dug deep into my abs, compressing that major intersection of the nerves of most of the body. Of course, it hurt a lot, and it had the classical effect of causing my diaphragm to spasm, blocking my breathing.

My arms reflexively wrapped around my middle even though that wasn't where I was punched. The rest of my body just froze. And in slow motion, I fell backward. Instinctively as I fell, I rounded my shoulders and tucked my chin into my chest. So as my body hit the floor of Alya's bedroom, I rolled backward instead of landing flat on my back, saving me a more painful landing and saving my skull from cracking hard against the floor. The thick carpet in the bedroom may have cushioned the fall anyway, but I was glad I didn't have to test that theory in actual practice.

As the pain subsided a little, my legs naturally uncurled and my body flattened out on the floor. But Alya had been ready for this. She sat down hard on my lower hips, effectively locking my legs from any movement whatsoever. She grabbed the lower hem of my T-shirt and pulled it up over my head, locking my arms stretched straight up, preventing me from moving them down again or even from pulling down my T-shirt. In this position, my abs were fully exposed and stretched out tight. This was exactly what Alya wanted, of course.

Alya punched me hard in the middle of my abs, at my navel. "Woof!

"Aly... Ooof!

"Alya what... Woof!

"...what are you do... Ooof!

"... doing...Woof!

"That hur... Woof!

"...hurts... Ooof!"

"Oh come on, girl! You know those abs of yours can take it," Alya said.

"Yes... Woof!

"Yes, but it still... Ooof!

"...still hurts... Woof!

"...hurts a lot... Ooof!

"So please stop! Ooof! Woof! Ooof! Urgh!

"Besides we nee... Woof!

"...need to study!"

"Oh, all right, I'll stop..." she said.

"...after this!" she said with a grin.

"Urgh! Ooof! Ooof! Woof! Ooof! Woof! Ooof!"

Alya pulled my T-shirt back down, and stood up. She bent down to me and took my hand to help me up. Of course, she was right. (Had Alya ever been wrong, about anything? Not during the time I had known her.) My abs could take her punches alright. But my abs still hurt from all those punches she had given them, somewhere over 20 of them. My abs muscles were hot and painful to the touch. But at least I had been able to tighten them enough that Alya's punches didn't penetrate too far into the softer, inner workings designed to be protected by those muscles.

Those abs muscles.

Only Alya knew I had abs, a six-pack in fact. In fact, I didn't even realize I was developing them myself. Just one day, I was stretching in front of the mirror and I surprised myself, seeing them sticking out of my stomach like so much rolled-up cloth belts, like a set of thick ropes tied around my body.

Yes, a six-pack. Of course, when you think of six-pack abs, you're probably picturing a bodybuilder, with a solidly-muscled body, with muscular legs and arms, and of course, with a solidly-muscled torso, including those pronounced abs and obliques, probably her whole body all oiled up, and tanned to a deep-brown color. Of course, I didn't look anything like that. Fortunately. I looked mostly like I did before. But more about that later.

Only Alya knew I had abs. She found out about them about a month ago when we were preparing for the school midterm tests.

A month ago, I was in a panic. The first midterm exams, across all subjects, were coming up all that next week. At the beginning of the school year, I had become Ladybug. Of course, that meant I devoted a lot of my time to either fighting Akumatized villains, or patrolling Paris looking for new ones. And since villains don't wait until school is out for the day to strike, (how inconsiderate of them), I missed a lot of school. Meaning I missed a lot of what the teachers were teaching us, meaning I had a lot of gaps in my meager notes, and therefore in my knowledge of the subjects being taught. So I was in a panic. So I turned to Alya.

Alya was one of the smartest girls I knew in school. Besides that, she kept the best notes of anyone in all her subjects. So after school, I stopped her, still in a panic.

"Alya, can I see your class notes? Mine are a little thin, and I really need to study hard for next week's tests."

"That's perfect," she said. "I was just going to see if I could study with you.

"You see," she said, "I have no problems with the science subjects like chemistry and biology. And the mathematics and literature and language subjects I have complete control of. But, as you know, I was born and raised in Martinique, thousands of miles from France proper. So French geography, history, politics, culture, and a lot of those related subjects, things that come naturally to you since you were born here, I was never taught. So in those subjects I need your help.

"So, are you available this coming weekend? You can come over, and we can spend all Saturday and Sunday cramming for the midterm tests. I can teach you, and you can teach me."

I was overjoyed at the prospect of learning from the smartest girl in the school, or at least one of the smartest. We could both review everything we had learned since the beginning of the school year and teach each other what the other doesn't know.

"OK, when should we meet on Saturday?" I said.

"I'll put together a lesson plan for the review on Saturday morning so we don't forget to study anything. So how about you coming over at noon on Saturday. And bring a change of clothes and something to sleep in. You can sleep over so you don't have to make that trek all the way back to your room late at night, and then have to return all that way back again Sunday morning. And don't forget to bring all your books. And a good notebook for notes. And a good supply of pencils. It helps tremendously to remember something if you have to actually write it down on something permanent like paper instead of on something like a tablet or cell phone."

That was just like Alya, thinking on her feet, and planning everything to the last detail at a moment's notice.

Saturday, a little after noon (I can't even be on time when I have half a day to get there). Just after noon, I got to Alya's. I took off my blazer and threw it over onto an unused chair and we started. We followed Alya's outline (all 20 or so pages of it), with her taking the lead on the science, math and language subjects and me taking the lead on the geography, history and cultural subjects (again, helped a lot by the pages and pages of class notes that Alya had made).

We studied all the rest of the day, well into the night, taking only a couple breaks for snacks and even for the complete dinner Alya's mother delivered to Alya's room for us, again as a part of Alya's plan. Sometime late Saturday night (or maybe it was early Sunday morning, as I had lost track of time by then), we stopped when neither of us could hold our heads up, let alone think coherently.

We both washed up down the hall then changed alternately in Alya's bedroom. I had a simple set of pajama bottoms and a loose T-shirt top, similar to the top I wore at school. And with something this simple, of course I had made them myself.

"You can sleep there." Alya pointed to a cot she had set up against the wall of her bedroom. It had a cushioning comforter on it and a blanket, though with the temperature Alya kept her room, I didn't expect I would be needing that. I doubted I would even need the sheets she had set between them.

I was tired, really tired. So I flipped off the blanket and the top sheet onto the floor and flopped down on the cot, even while Alya was still getting her bed ready.

I was really, really tired. I stretched my whole body, stretching my arms over my head, taking that last stretch before I fell asleep.

"Hey!" yelled Alya, waking me only a little. "You've got abs!"

This woke me up all the way.

"What...what do you mean?"

Knowing exactly what she meant, I quickly pulled down the shirt that had ridden up when I had stretched, covering my stomach again.

Yes, I had abs.

I had always been slim. Some may even have called it skinny. But I wasn't skinny. In fact, I was just about average for a mid-teenager and a French girl, and just about average for all the other girls in my school class.

But now I had abs, as Alya had just discovered. They just appeared one day in front of the mirror. Well, that wasn't really true, but that's how it seemed to me.

I was pretty sure I knew how I got them. But of course, I couldn't tell Alya.

I had transformed into Ladybug the first time several months back, at the beginning of the school year. And I had been fighting villains ever since, swinging around the Paris rooftops in pursuit, easily jumping 20 or 30 feet straight up, using acrobatic moves that would put any Olympic gymnast to shame. And I had been doing this from the very first time I had transformed.

I had thought about this quite often and decided it was the magic of my Miraculous, my earrings, that gave me that power, boosting what strength and agility I had considerably. And all that running, jumping and swinging as Ladybug had given Marinette some extra strength and agility, and of course, muscles.

So now, I had abs.

As I said earlier, my muscles didn't show, at least not that much. I was still slim, that hadn't changed. As my muscles got more defined, my body stayed the same. In fact, the only time you could see them at all was when I was intentionally flexing them, or when I was stretching, as Alya had just seen. At all other times, no one would even notice them. And if anyone had noticed that I was getting just a little less slim, since my body changed over a period of several months, they would have thought it was just due to a little extra exercise on my part.

I had another secret. I made almost all my own clothes, but especially what I wore to school each day. So when I found out that the thin, tight T-shirt tops I had made started to get a little tight on my body and my muscles started to show through when I flexed or stretched, I redesigned them. I used a slightly less-flexible fabric so even when I stretched and flexed, my clothes wouldn't show the muscles that were underneath. Also over the period of those last few months, I ever-so-slightly changed the measurements of my clothes to expand them a little, so the latest ones didn't fit skin-tight like the ones earlier in the school year did.

So, no one noticed I now had abs.

Except for Alya.

"Hey! You've got abs!"

"What?" I said, quickly pulling down my pajama T-shirt. "Of course not!"

"Oh yes you do!" she said. She grabbed my T-shirt and pulled it back up then poked my abs with her finger. Unfortunately for me, when her finger rammed into them, instinctively I tightened them up, displaying them to their best, most defined, almost.

"Would you look at that! The petite and skinny Marinette has abs!"

"I am not skinny!" I said, and almost laughed at what I had just said, or more precisely, what I hadn't said.

"How did you get those?" she said.

I was in a bind. Obviously, I couldn't just say, "Oh, I'm really Ladybug. I get all those muscles from fighting villains and jumping around all those rooftops of Paris." So I did the next best thing. I told the truth.

"I help my father around the bakery all the time. Sometimes those cakes and pastry orders are very heavy." That was the absolute truth. Of course, it wasn't the reason for my abs, but it was the truth just the same. And Alya did just what I thought she would, jumped to the wrong conclusion.

"So doing all that heavy lifting at your father's shop gave you those fabulous abs," she said.

"And I run to school every day," I said. Another truth. And again, not related to her original question. Of course, I ran to school every day. I was always late, so I had to run.

"That's very diligent of you, getting that exercise every single day."

I just smiled. "Alya, I really need to get to sleep, or I'll never be able to do any studying tomorrow. We still have lots of courses to cover and we only have tomorrow, wait," I said glancing at the clock, "I mean later today, to do it. We can talk more about this tomorrow. Goodnight, Alya."

Even with all that had just transpired, I fell back onto the cot and was asleep almost before my head hit the pillow.

Adrien said, "Marinette, I love you. Let's get married.

"Let's have two kids, no three. And a dog. And a hamster.

"So, Marinette. Will you marry me?

"Marinette?

"Marinette?

"Marinette! Get up!"

"In a little bit, mom... Let me sleep in a little bit longer..."

"OOOF!"

I bolted out of bed, only to fall to the floor. Too late, I realized I wasn't in my bed but in Alya's cot. And my abs were on fire, pulsating and burning.

It took me a few seconds to realize what had happened. It had been Alya, of course. When I didn't get out of bed, she punched me!

In the abs!

Hard!

I finally came around. "Alya! Why did you do that! It hurt!"

"I was just testing a theory I had. You know, of course, that most anyone else would still be on the floor gasping for air. So your abs are not just for show."

"Yes, but it hurt!"

"Oh, suck it up, girl. It's not as if I did any lasting damage. You'll recover soon enough, that is if you haven't already."

She was right (as usual). I had never been punched in the abs before, at least not on purpose. Of course, I had been hit in the stomach before accidentally, what person hasn't, but never hard. But I was convinced that I could not have taken Alya's punch before I became Ladybug, or at least in the last month or so when my abs had become more visible.

"And your response also helps to explain why you weren't hurt when I elbowed you in your solar plexus that one time at that Egyptian exhibit at the art museum," said Alya. "I was only joking then, but I misjudged the distance and hit you a little harder than I had intended. But you seemed to shrug that off really quickly.

"Well, are you going to get dressed? Tired or not, we still need to finish our studying. My mother brought up a nice breakfast, including, wait for it, a load of pastries from your father's bakery," said Alya. "So get up and we can get fat from all that sugar. And maybe that'll hide your abs some."

"Alya," I said in a serious tone. "I'd really like to keep this a secret, at least for now, from everyone. Knowing Chloé, you can bet she would take this and blow it all out of proportion. For the rest of the school year, I can just see her calling me 'Musclebound Marinette' or some other, worse name. And at this point, I'm not so sure how to respond to this myself. So for right now, can we keep this just between you and me? Please?"

"Girl, I wasn't planning on letting this out in any case. So of course I'll keep this a secret in public," said Alya. "Of course in private..." and she stuck her finger into my navel to finish the sentence.

"Thanks. Now, let's get back to that review. No! Let's get to that breakfast first! Then to the review."

After breakfast, we continued cramming for the exams that were going to start the next day. I was still tired. So several times I stretched, my T-shirt riding up again. And of course, Alya took advantage of that each of those times to punch me in the abs again.

And even one time, I stretched on purpose. And when she punched me, I punched her back, in her abs, noting from the feel of it that she may have abs of her own under her plaid shirt.

That had been a month ago. Ever since, Alya would punch me just once in a while in the abs, but then, only when we were alone.

Something had occurred to me in the last month. When she was Lady Wifi, Alya had been able to take down Cat Noir during their fight. I knew that when someone is Akumatized, they don't gain any new powers, but that their powers are just enhancements of their normal-life abilities. So I wondered how she had gotten those fighting skills. I knew she punched very hard (my often-sore abs attested to that), but I didn't think that alone would have been enough to win the fight against Cat Noir.

I'd have to think about that.

"Well, should we start studying again?" I said.

Alya nodded.


End file.
